Total Audacity noob here

[kozikowski]

Cool. I know somebody with a North Caroline version of that voice and he would regularly draw a crowd when he told stories. That's a darn good start. Sounding like a Hollywood or New York announcer is not required. The goal is to draw a crowd.

I got your submission to pass Audiobook specifications except for noise. It sounds like you're recording in a cement factory.

Can you tell your computer is on just by listening? If so that's not a good sign. I think I'm listening to the ventilation fans in the computer since they don't settle around any standard noise pitches.

Here. I made it worse intentionally so you could get a sense of what's wrong. It's actually not this bad.

Audacity Forum Sample JH 001NoiseSample.wav

(529.41 KiB) Downloaded 39 times

It's too loud to fix with Effect > Noise Reduction. The ACX specification is noise at -60dB. That means the noise behind your voice has to be a thousand times quieter than your speech. Can you tell if the refrigerator kicks in? Semi's or the FedEx truck go by?


The voice level is also low. The ideal blue waves are fatter than that and perfect ones have tips reach up to about half-way (0.5) every so often.



Generally, only the people with full-on sound mixers can make perfect waves, but you should get louder and you can do it by turning the microphone or interface up or get closer. You should be about a Hawaiian Shaka away from the microphone or a power fist if you have a blast filter.






Lets run out of what you got now before you start writing checks. A more expensive microphone might make the background noise much louder and clearer.

Koz

[kozikowski]

I'm going to do the inventory and see if I have enough half-inch PVC to make a simple sound cave with water pipes.

Koz

[kozikowski]

There's a scary test you can do. Can you overload the sound channel—on purpose?

Announce while watching the bouncing sound meters. Keep getting louder and yell if you have to until the meters go all the way up and turn bright red.

If your sound meters are always blue, you may have them set wrong. Right-click the recording meters > Options > Gradient.

Your recording voice should be about half that. So no, you can't mumble into your beer from across the room.

Koz

[James H]

This is all great stuff, Koz.
I can't write or do much ATM as I'm working right now.
The noise is almost certainly from the PC: it sits on my desk about 2 feet to my right front. I have 3 case fans, the PSU fan and a liquid cooling system in it. I built it in December 2012 so the old gray mare is, well, old and gray. I just don't have the disposable income right now to build a new PC.
When doing my level adjustments, should I take the sound card input up first, say to 75% instead of 50%? Then adjust Audacity?
I'll do and write more later.
Thanks mucho!
-JH

[Trebor]

... my sample clip is attached below. Please rip it to shreds and advise me what to do ...

Audacity Forum Sample JH 001.wav (1.68 MiB)

The level is too low, too quiet. The waveform should look be bigger, like Koz's picture.
If you can increase the gain controls on the hardware/software that will make it louder.

There is sizzly electronic-noise which is a combination of harmonics from computer-generated 1kHz* signal ,
and harmonics of 60Hz mains-hum. [ * the USB power-supply is usually the source of that ].

Sizzle is harmonics of 1kHz & harmonics of 60Hz.png (429.92 KiB) Viewed 578 times

Your hardware is designed for Skype-type communication,
but it's not good enough for a professional recording : it has too much electronic-noise.

Irrespective of the hardware you use, you'll need to reduce the sibilance: aka De-Ess.
There are free plugins which work in Audacity which do that , e.g. attached.

''Sitting - pC - itS -' , Original, Steve's DeEsser, ''TB Sibalance'' DeEsser.flac

Before-After-After : comparison of two different free DeEsser plugins in Audacity

(887.82 KiB) Downloaded 25 times

[Bern500]

Hi Kozikoski,

Really useful information in these post's

Could tell me how you managed to get your playback meters to go lower than -60 please? that's a really useful feature

[Trebor]

... playback meters to go lower than -60 ...

See ... https ://manual.audacityteam.org/man/interface_preferences.html

[kozikowski]

-96dB is the lowest regular sound can go, so that's where I left my sound meters. But. Note I also pulled my sound meters all the way across the Audacity window Left to Right. Just click-grab the meter window and pull. The rest of the little windows will scurry out of the way.

-96dB setting is the maximum sound information you can get with the best visibility. You may decide to use one of the other settings if you have a tablet or laptop with smaller screen. I don't like the -60dB setting because as you found, there's important stuff just below -60dB and it's important to know that. There is a compromise meter setting and I don't remember what it is, but I think it's in the -70dB range.

Koz

[Bern500]

Thank you very much for that information. Adjusted my settings and it's working a treat, I can see me awake until the early hours now

[James H]

I'm attaching sample track #2 below. This is with my inputs maxed to (near as I can tell) 100% and using the Hum Removal and Steve's De-Esser plugins.
Is it normal, when I'm not recording or have any kind of audio program running, to hear myself talking when I've got my 'phones on?